HKBN's big hairy audacious offer

Indeed, its ambition is tacked high on the mast and in blazing neon. HKBNers call it their Big Hairy Audacious Goal (or B-HAG), which is to become Hong Kong’s number one NBN provider in customers and revenue by 2016.

There’s a good reason for its confidence: it’s the only broadband player in Hong Kong that’s growing.

The telco added 34,000 subs in the first half of the year, overtaking i-Cable on the way to become the city’s no. 2 ISP. Rivals Hutchison and i-Cable lost customers.

Market leader PCCW added 3,000 new customers – a rounding error on its 1.3 million total.

It has a big break over HKBN, which is on 391,000, but the underlying reason for HKBN’s confidence is its low cost base. It has spent just $400 million on the network in the last ten years to get coverage of two-thirds of Hong Kong’s 2.3 million homes.

That’s the reason why it is now offering 100 Mbps for just HK$100 ($13) a month. That’s 100 Mbps symmetric, thanks to HKBN’s pioneering use of Metro Ethernet to connect Hong Kong’s high-density urban areas.